I think Sturg has found a few "textbooks" that even I
will like. When you can draw something out of the first chapter of a
book, make it interesting, and even be able to apply it to a class like Algebra
2, then you know you've got something to work with. I'm writing my blog
about the intro chapter of Tovani's book. It's a narrative from the
author about an experience she had when doing what she does - teach literacy.
Like I said earlier, it's not often that you can pull applicable
material from an intro chapter of a book, but I found it so interesting the way
she wrote the first chapter that I found myself paying as much attention to it
as I would The Lord of the
Rings. Everyone has a bunch of knowledge in their head. This
chapter took a bunch of things I knew about reading and my content area and
plopped them in one box in my brain.
First and foremost, I am reminded that the first thing a true educator does is teach students to
become lifelong learners – to teach themselves.
No matter what happens at the end of the year, a student should at least
have the knowledge to be able to find and review previous content for
themselves. Secondly, what we teach as
educators should be
Applicable. It’s
silly to teach your subject in a way that students will never use ever again
after your class. Finally, the Fix-Up
strategies really brought connections from teaching math to teaching math
literacy.
In the end, I’m looking forward to the next week so that I
can try some of these fix-up strategies in my own classroom. Working in a school where many of the
students are high achieving, but they achieve at mimicry, not actual ingestion,
I hope to use some of these strategies with my students with hope that they
will ingest the material a bit easier.
Sue, I really like your comment, "No matter what happens at the end of the year, a student should at least have the knowledge to be able to find and review previous content for themselves." This is so crucial in education. It is like the saying, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. However, if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Just telling students the answers to tasks is not helping them. We need to teach them how to find the answers. Because at the end of the day, it's more than just a grade. It's a skill that students need to acquire.
ReplyDeleteI also love that you mentioned teaching math literacy! With Common Core, students being able to use math literacy to explain the reasoning of their answers is so important! How do you plan to use the fix-up strategies in your classroom? What is one strategy that you plan to use?